VisionMobile has published a report (CC licensed) that compares and evaluates the openness of eight open source projects – Android, Qt, Symbian, MeeGo, Mozilla, WebKit, Linux and Eclipse. The report, partly funded by the EU, studied the openness of the transparency, influence and control of each project.
The report found that Android was the least open project of those studied, only scoring 23% on their openness scale – a finding that surprised few in the technology industry. Google promised an open mobile OS in Android when it launched, but in reality Google’s “unilateral Android project decision-making processes”, “closed contributions process model”, and lack of a public roadmap mean that it essentially has many of the trappings of proprietary software.
The reportgoes on to discuss that in general the most successful open source software offers greater openness, but admits that Android bucks this trend due to Google’s financial and engineering might behind the project – a so called Android “paradox”.
[via Ars Technica]